They now look like this (bottom), spaced out and hard to read. GVim above shows what it looks like with 2.2.0.

I had this exact same problem on an Ubuntu machine that I don't have access to now, and I fixed it there in fontconfig somehow, but I can't remember what I had to change. Anyone know?_________________*.ebuild // /etc/service/*

I can see the problem - the bottom part of the image has all the letters spaced considerably further apart from each other.

Having said that, I have no helpful idea how to fix this, other than downgrading the offending package.

Yeah, I've masked >=2.3 for now until I figure it out. Here is a better image with libXft 2.2 on top and libXft 2.3 below, where the letter spacing resembles CJK fullwidth fonts and 15% of my horizontal space is going to waste._________________*.ebuild // /etc/service/*

Edit, meh, solved. According to the changelog, I missed the switch from USE=truetype to USE=xft, thus I didn't have it._________________++++++++++[>+++++++>++++++++++>+++>+<<<<-]>++.>+.+++++++..+++.>++.<<+++++++++++++++.>.+++.------.--------.>+.>.